The Court’s rejection of Bilski’s patent application got rid of a symptom of the disease, but failed to treat the real cause by reconfirming that thought and thought processes are not patentable.”

The patent law blog Patently O called the decision "business as usual" but for those keeping score at home only one of the nine seemed ready to go beyond the very narrow holding in favor of patents, while four seemed ready to scrap it.

Software patent opponent Florian Mueller, writing from Germany, is correct about one thing. This question is now back in the hands of legislators:

Only new legislation could restrict the scope of patentable subject matter beyond the Supreme Court's permissive stance. The ruling makes reference to an earlier decision, according to which the courts "should not read into the patent laws limitations and conditions which the legislature has not expressed."

A Justice Kagan would be unlikely to alter the court's balance on this question, since she's said to side with Stevens in dissent, but if she's as persuasive as her backers claim she might surprise us.